The Analysis of Sea Levels.

[SOXBLOX]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

There are no "natural rights". All rights are a social construct.

I don't know whether you're joking or serious...

Anyway, if we go the nuclear route, is it better from a cost perspective to have a few large centralized plants, or many smaller ones? It seems like transporting fuel and waste to and from a lot of different plants would be kinda expensive.

[Rakaydos]

22 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

I don't know whether you're joking or serious...

Anyway, if we go the nuclear route, is it better from a cost perspective to have a few large centralized plants, or many smaller ones? It seems like transporting fuel and waste to and from a lot of different plants would be kinda expensive.

Mass production of small modular reactors is the way to go. Unfortunately, that has to get pass the hurdle of not just reactor design, but reactor-factory design and all the regulatory hurdles of applying buisness concepts to something that should not proliferate.

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

I know no one here suggested that, for sure. This forum is quite rational. But I left the definition of "unreasonable amounts of authority" intentionally vague.

Personally, I think we should err on the side of the smallest incursion into natural rights as possible, and I'm sure you all will agree. There have got to be better ways than more regulations.

Now, here is where I start to disagree. It's not that you're wrong outright, or that I think you're evil, or whatever, but I do see some unspoken assumptions about what's right and what's wrong that I can't quite agree with.

I believe that just because a majority wants something doesn't mean it's right. I believe there are limits no majority has a right to cross, no matter how small the minority. I can agree with and work to solve the issue of climate change as long as we don't cross those lines. But if we do, I have to oppose it.

I don't know. Maybe you believe this, too, and I just misread? If I did, my apologies.

I hope we start building more fission plants here in the US; it would be super beneficial, and it wouldn't take much. People just need to know that it's not as dangerous as they think...

I have not seen any of the major/mainstream voices calling for authoritarian measures against climate change is what I meant. I am likely mistaken, but it appeared as though you meant all or the majority of proposals for major action against climate change had some sort of authoritarian aspect.

The comment I made was about a hypothetical scenario where there is a major (like 70% or more) majority support “drastic” action against climate change. I shall clarify, I don’t believe everything is rosy just because there is a majority. The minority’s problems and opinions should be taken into account even if one “wins the vote”.

You do seem to have misinterpreted what I wrote but this is my fault as I now realize what I wrote was unclear.

I did not mean to say that if the majority supports it it is “right”. After all, right and wrong are a matter of opinion. But if a decent majority supports it, that is “what should happen” in accordance with democratic principle- whether I or you believe it is “right” or “wrong”. But of course, that does not make it “right”.

This of course includes taking less action against climate change. Within the context of government, that would be “what should happen” if a decent majority supports it. I refer to the actual physical actions to be hypothetically taken/not taken, not the actual decision itself, which in this hypothetical scenario I would continue to hold an opinion of opposition. In the opposite scenario I assume that the other side shall continue to hold their opinion and do not intend to suggest that just because the majority wins a vote the minority should drop their opinion or cease fighting for it.

I would prefer if climate change could be solved through agreement and understanding instead of one sided regulations imposed by one side over another. Not only would this cause less unrest and discord but it would save many hours of government worker’s time and taxpayer dollars.

But I desire to explore all possibilities and thus mentioned my opinions I have on the method by which such regulation might be emplaced, if that is what it comes to. I am not trying to suggest that emplacement of regulations upon a minority are ideal or “good”.

Also in general I am talking about principle and theory, not actual (real) policy. All of the ideas I have presented are hypothetical.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding of my opinions you might have. Again, it is not my intention to change your opinion, so if you disagree with what I have written, that is completely fine. My intention with this response is to clear up my opinion, not further challenge/offer critique yours.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

I don't know whether you're joking or serious...

Anyway, if we go the nuclear route, is it better from a cost perspective to have a few large centralized plants, or many smaller ones? It seems like transporting fuel and waste to and from a lot of different plants would be kinda expensive.

I think he meant the concept of natural rights only exist within the human mind and therefore cannot be considered part of the natural world, which is what he may have mistook you for meaning when you said “natural”. Within the context of science, it is an aspect of human social behavior.

——————————————-

I’d like to note I have no intention of dragging out the policy related aspect of this discussion. As I said earlier, it is not my intention to change anyone’s opinion, so as long as my opinion has been clarified, even if others are still in disagreement, I have no intention of pushing this part of the discussion further until it becomes off topic.

——————————————-

So the thing in Japan in regards to opposition to nuclear power seems to be that the prevalence of very powerful natural disasters makes nuclear power feel risky. However Fukushima was very clearly a management and design issue with that particular plant, not related to nuclear power as a whole.

I saw someone mention the opposition to nuclear power is lessening in the US. Is this actually true? While there isn’t necessarily anyone saying “stop”, I myself have not seen any voices saying “let’s do it” as part of proposed action on climate change.

[DDE]

8 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I have not seen any of the major/mainstream voices calling for authoritarian measures against climate change is what I meant. I am likely mistaken, but it appeared as though you meant all or the majority of proposals for major action against climate change had some sort of authoritarian aspect.

If we step back from science for a while, most of the aversion comes to anti-climate change action from the fear of a "red-green mafia". Thatcher's quote sums up the sentiment:

Quote

[Global warming] provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.

In practice this is concern about the scope creep of ostensibly climate-related proposals (e.g. the Green New Deal) that end up filled with the usual points about combating economic inequities within countries. The mainstream political right, of course, is at fault for ceding the ground in the topic of environmentalism to the left - there's plenty of potential platform materials in there (e.g. the Center for Immigration Studies opposed influx into California on environmental grounds) but the obsession of the mainstream American right (and their feckless emulators worldwide) with libertarianism, deregulation and reducing government economic spending has led to stringent and literal climate change denial.

It's also a strawman to think that climate-justified illiberalism is going to come in the form of a centralized body - a Climate Führer as mentioned above. The current method is collective action and mafia-like exclusion of those companies that aren't "respectable", that don't satify "stakeholder expectations" (a garbled version of climate science and/or left-wing climate action talking points as proliferated by the "respectable" "mainstream" media). I've doxxed myself on these forums anyway

so here goes: I'm part of a project to boost a bank's ESG rating. And what I see in the field is a feeding frenzy of NGOs, rating agencies and external consultancies that (1) promote standards that were formulated at best by some UN task force, and at worst by their fellow NGOs, consultancies and activist groups, i.e. undemocratically, (2) insist that commerical companies must comply with those "stakeholder expectations" regardless of national law, and (3) insist that companies and banks must cease doing business with those entities that do not adhere to the standards outlined in (1) and (2).

So, it's not authoritarianism as commonly understood. You're just supposed to run your company/country without the major multinationals buying your products or lending you money.

Frankly it's just going to lead to the rise of specialized "brown" corporates, much like how Glencore shows up whenever there's sanctions. Comparing an ESG report of someone like Citi or HSBC to that of the China Construction Bank is alsready quite a hoot.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Here is an article that analogizes my concern about the language used when discussing climate change and how to respond. 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/30/media/variant-media-coverage-white-house/index.html

In this article on covid, they explain how hyperbolic headlines and statements lacking in context actually serve to harden resistance to change - when more informed and truthful reporting can better sway people to become part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem. 

Thus 'drastic action' to avert 'certain doom' hardens resistance to change when 'simple changes' to reduce the likelihood of 'a range of possible adverse outcomes' might be more influential to the skeptic.  One is hyperbole, the other reasoned discourse. 

[Dientus]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Thatcher's quote sums up the sentiment:

Quote

[Global warming] provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.

..and the comman person doesn't see this. As a matter of fact, the average citizen in any "civilized" or "advanced" nation refuses to see much past a few well worded FB posts or News articles.

 

Let's shift gears, electric cars are another area where the public has incorrect or incomplete information. This is another area where both sides misuse data and misinform the public to truths.

i.e. If we don't do Y in X years we die.

 

12 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Thus 'drastic action' to avert 'certain doom' hardens resistance to change when 'simple changes' to reduce the likelihood of 'a range of possible adverse outcomes' might be more influential to the skeptic.  One is hyperbole, the other reasoned discourse. 

Very nicely put. But remember, as all things scientific, nothing is absolute. We work on probabilities and likelihood of a given outcome with available data.

Skewed data, invalid outcome. That's why complete disclosure and information obtained is a must.

Edited July 31, 2021 by Dientus
added

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

15 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

There are no "natural rights". All rights are a social construct

 

13 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

I don't know whether you're joking or serious

He's actually correct, but contextually it's not something people think about often. 

To analogize - my first year of law school the professor tried to explain the definition of 'property'.   For most people, that is a simple thing to understand and does not require much thought - but that is thinking within a certain system where people in the system agree on rules.  Believe it or not - in legal terms, defining 'property' is difficult.  The actual explanation is that society defines what is property by granting and protecting a bunch of different rights to those who own property against those who don't. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_of_rights

I came away with the understanding that 'property' is whatever someone (or a society) strong enough to enforce their rules says it is. 

Think about the classic story of buying Manhattan for a handful of beads.  One society believed in the ownership of land... The other did not view land as property.  Each thought the other was idiots in the exchange... Except that one side ultimately had the power to enforce its particular understanding of 'property' against the other. 

In the US we like to say that people enjoy certain inalienable rights - but those rights are not recognized universally.  Think about how many countries view the rights and responsibility of citizens differently. 

So - technically 'natural rights' in the US is whatever we say they are, so long as we can enforce it - and we are strong enough and have enough friends who agree with us that we are able to push the concept onto the other societies... To a degree.   A certain powerful and insular country in Asia comes to mind as the obvious example of the limits to Western ideas on natural and inalienable rights. 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[DDE]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Thus 'drastic action' to avert 'certain doom' hardens resistance to change when 'simple changes' to reduce the likelihood of 'a range of possible adverse outcomes' might be more influential to the skeptic.  One is hyperbole, the other reasoned discourse. 

Yes, but there is a demand for self-gratifying doomerism, and an unswayed observer isn't wrong to suspect a craving for power behind those slogans.

Fortunately, most of those people don't get anywhere near power. But they're really loud, shaoe the debate, and yes, embitter the opposition.

2 hours ago, Dientus said:

Very nicely put. But remember, as all things scientific, nothing is absolute.

And this is where we arrive to the topic of scientism, which treats science as a bludgeon rather than a tool of inquiry. Thus "scientifically based" becomes an appeal to infallible authority.

Your average religious person didn't go anywhere, they just found new, more socially acceptable sources of divine dispensations (and doom prophecies).

Edited July 31, 2021 by DDE

[Dman979]

Let's avoid the political aspects of this conversation, please.

[Dientus]

 

 

That is so unfortunately true.

 

Trying to use an ambiguous example is hard but I will try:

Take a beaver, a beaver definitely impacts his environment in both positive and negative ways. When the beaver builds his dam there are creatures flooded from their homes and then such as foxes or rabbits. While we know by building the dam it is definitely a large cause, did we take into consideration that it was also flood season? And because of that the damage was far worse than it should have been? For that matter the lack of water downstream affects wildlife and stops the migration of certain fish. Is that taken into account as well? And because of all of this is it necessarily bad per se? After all there is wildlife that rely on those pools of water during dry seasons.

 

I was going to use an example with the ocean levels and the polar ice caps however it would not come across ambiguous enough because too many people already have a preconceived notion in their head and I could see people jumping on one side or the other thinking I was trying to support the opposite side of which they were so passionate.

Which leads us back to that exact bludgeon that was used to get them that way in the first place. What a shame.

[SOXBLOX]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

He's actually correct, but contextually it's not something people think about often. 

I should probably clarify my position...

I simply believe that all humans, by virtue of existing, have a right to their own life. If they spend a bit of their time making or doing something, then that something is theirs, because they've literally mixed it with their life. They can trade the something for pizza or little green slips of paper, and then it's no longer theirs. As you can see, I'm Lockean. I don't believe rights come from society. Society exists to protect rights. Call me old-fashioned, I guess.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/31/arctic-climate-change-jetstream-winter/

Relevant article

[sevenperforce]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Here is an article that analogizes my concern about the language used when discussing climate change and how to respond. 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/30/media/variant-media-coverage-white-house/index.html

In this article on covid, they explain how hyperbolic headlines and statements lacking in context actually serve to harden resistance to change - when more informed and truthful reporting can better sway people to become part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem. 

Thus 'drastic action' to avert 'certain doom' hardens resistance to change when 'simple changes' to reduce the likelihood of 'a range of possible adverse outcomes' might be more influential to the skeptic.  One is hyperbole, the other reasoned discourse. 

Communication is hard.

How we choose to communicate surrounding issues of public health and public safety has major consequences. How much is too much to share? How much is not enough? Would we rather use strong communication to get highly effective compliance from a small subset of the population or moderate our language and get less effective compliance, but from more people? What are the short-term goals? What are the long-term goals?

It is all extremely difficult.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Would we rather use strong communication to get highly effective compliance from a small subset of the population or moderate our language and get less effective compliance, but from more people?

And this will vary from population to population. I've come to treat Hofstede's cultural dimensions with suspicion, but I think one or even two feature the willingness to listen to experts (authority) vs reliance on own common sense (or "sense").

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Of interest - w/r/t glacier melt: Melting glaciers reveal lost mountain pass and artifacts used by Vikings - CNN

Apparently a pass, used during the Viking period (which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period) was lost during the Little Ice Age.  Retreating glaciers have revealed tools, horse shoes and etc.

On a different, but similar note: recent study on Earth's energy imbalance: Earth's energy imbalance removes almost all doubt from human-made climate change (nbcnews.com) This kind of argument has appeal.

While that article does not mention it... other articles about Climate Change like to bring up the argument that global temperatures and sea-level rise and corresponding loss of glacier/ continental ice mass has been growing since the advent of the Industrial Revolution (nascent mid 1700s to mid 1800s).  Temperature models supporting the alarming heating of the earth like so show temperature variations from the late 1800s till today: Video: Global Warming from 1880 to 2020 – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)

One problem I have with using this as an alarm; the Industrial Revolution happened (the nascent period, at least) during the latter part of the Little Ice Age (mid 1300s to mid 1800s).  It's unlikely that the few factories churning out coal smoke in Europe and NA were the cause of the end of the Little Ice Age... and yet the warming period began back then.  You end up having people using the start of the Industrial Revolution as the beginning and cause of Global Warming - and while the two might have occurred similarly in time, it is unlikely that one caused the other.  It's not a good 'alarm' signal -- and one that if someone does just a little digging appears discredited at the outset.  Thus, as alluded to above - arguments like the energy imbalance as a result of pollution seem stronger to me than 'we've been killing the Earth since the start of the Industrial Revolution'. 

This is one of the reasons  I prefer the 'we live here, quit trashing the place' school of thought.

 

...

Also: Trust in science can be risky without critical mindset - Futurity

Edited August 2, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[MKI]

I was reading a USA Today Article (Sorry its paywalled) that had an interesting data point:

Quote

Nearly half (49%) of respondents in a recent survey said they planned to move in the next year, blaming extreme temperatures, and the increasing frequency or intensity of natural disasters for a role in their decision to relocate, according to the survey, commissioned earlier this year by real estate website Redfin.

This will cause Redfin to show climate risk to the site. 

The article also brings up a quote from an asset manager that talks about the difficulties of understanding the risk in a 30 year mortgage if its hard to estimate climate impact in that span. 

 

I personally am very fortunate that I currently live by renting relatively close to the ocean, but only need to drive a few miles inland to hit temperatures 10 degree's hotter on a warm day. I honestly am not sure what I'm going to do in terms of trying to buy a house with such data points in mind, I don't like the idea of not being able to go outside because its always 100+. Otherwise I might as well live in Alaska haha

 

 

[DDE]

16 minutes ago, MKI said:

This will cause Redfin to show climate risk to the site. 

The article also brings up a quote from an asset manager that talks about the difficulties of understanding the risk in a 30 year mortgage if its hard to estimate climate impact in that span. 

On that topic, I remember seeing something from ING. There's not much info about the results, but they're trying to figure climate risk into mortgages and insurance.

 https://www.ing.com/MediaEditPage/ING-Climate-Risk-report-2020.htm (pdf, starting slide 19)

P.S. I'm biased on "interesting" because I've spent the last several months of my life picking apart the tiniest shreds of this stuff.

Edited August 2, 2021 by DDE

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, MKI said:

I currently live by renting relatively close to the ocean, but only need to drive a few miles inland to hit temperatures 10 degree's hotter on a warm day

Sounds like LA.  Was that way when I left 30 years ago. 

 

50 minutes ago, DDE said:

they're trying to figure climate risk into mortgages and insurance.

If they work these costs into commercial and industrial insurance... Things are gonna change. 

However I'm more confident that they will just continue to screw the little guy - and nothing will change until enough little guys demand changes 

Edited August 2, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[StrandedonEarth]

10 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

If they work these costs into commercial and industrial insurance... Things are gonna change. 

Yeah, strata insurance has gone crazy here lately, which I blame on what strikes me as a recent rash of major structure and condo fires in the province lately.

[Vanamonde]

A digression about nuclear power safety has been moved here. 

[Souptime]

oh boy what has my original thread caused

[mikegarrison]

3 minutes ago, Souptime said:

oh boy what has my original thread caused

The thing is, what they were warning about is a simple consequence of linear superposition.

When you superimpose something like a constant sea level rise with cyclic effects like this "wobble", you get periods where the observed effect changes slowly or not at all (when the cyclic number is declining while the constant rate is increasing), and then as the cycle changes it seems like you have especially rapid worsening (when the base rate is still increasing but now the cyclic number is swinging up).

The periods when the cyclic rate is in decline fool people into thinking there is no problem, and then the periods where the cyclic rate is in ascendance suddenly seem like they came out of nowhere.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

59 minutes ago, Souptime said:

oh boy what has my original thread caused

Look at this 

They illustrate cyclic changes there in a different context like that @mikegarrison described 

 

[mikegarrison]

IPCC 6th assessment report is coming out today, apparently.

I've not read it yet (good luck trying to get to their website!), but reports are that it shows sea level rise has increased in rate. Also that due to the slow response rate of the loops involved, we are already "locked in" to sea level rise until mid-century even if we immediately cut all climate-changing emissions.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Humanity's ally against climate change 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/04/22/earth-day-biodiversity/%3foutputType=amp

All the more reason to protect what we've got 

Edited August 9, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli